


Lazarus

by Lue4028



Series: Sociopath [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Coma, Frozen!Sherlock, Gen, Hurt John Watson, M/M, Pining, Pining John, Sherlock icicles!!, Uh so this starts out funny but get ready for major angst, comatose Sherlock, omg, why
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-22 17:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14313591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lue4028/pseuds/Lue4028
Summary: Do not read. Just don't. Go on with your happy life and never look back.





	1. Denial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So I just read the last chapter of this and... no. Turn around. You don't need this ok, you don't. You want a happy fic with lots of fluff right now. You do. Don't shake your head at me just do it.
> 
> Now.
> 
>  
> 
> NOW.
> 
>  
> 
> Omg you can't be helped.

John is flipping through cosmopolitan magazine in the ER waiting room. His five year old daughter is seated beside him, looking more worried than he does.

"You're not very affected by this." Rose notes.

"You're right I'm not," he says, scanning through ads for cardio machines and the latest pharmaceuticals.

"You're not concerned? He took two bullets protecting you and barely made it to the hospital."

"It’s a stunt, Rose," he replies, with the wise, slightly impatient tone most parents take on when they are explaining life to their children, "It’s what psychopaths do. Keeps them entertained."

"You're saying that life-and-death battle going on over there is a stunt?" she asks dubiously, as the ominous sound of someone flatlining permeates the waiting room. Some on-call staff bustle by in an otherwise typical, mundane night at the hospital.

"It wouldn't be the first time he'd done it," John states, flipping a page, apparently more inclined toward the magazine article he's reading than the conversation.

“You don’t think this is a little extreme for a stunt?” Rose asks, trying to reason with him or get him to just look at where they are.

“Nope.” John says, perfectly content with that answer.

Rose doesn’t feel convinced. "You sure about that?" 

"I know it’s a stunt because sociopaths don't jump in front of bullets for people,” John explains, “They only do it because they've seen it on TV and think its trendy."

 Rose gnaws her lip. "From what the surgeon said, there’s a good chance he's going to die."

"You want to bet? I say that man walks out of there miraculously unscathed within the next hour."

Rose contemplates it and goes with “Ten.”

“Fifty,” John returns.

“Sixty.”

Yes, it's come to this. He's betting on whether Sherlock dies or lives on this episode of Sherlock's flair for the dramatic. He wasn't always like this. He was a nice man, once. "Seventy."

"Hundred."

"The only way he doesn't is if he isn't a sociopath, which I know for a fact he is. Trust me, I’ve got two murders and one psychotic homicidal sister to prove it."

One of the residents comes out to inform them of the status. The expression on his face isn’t reassuring.

"Sir, I'm sorry to inform you Sherlock Holmes didn't make it."

John bristles. " _The bastard._ Where is he?” John demands, standing and throwing the magazine back on the tabletop, “I want to see him right now-"

"I'm afraid you can't. He's being prepped for organ donation."

John smirks, like hell he is. "That's funny, because he's not an organ donor," he snaps and tries to elbow his way past the resident into the ICU double doors, where nurse attempts block his way, "I'll be damned if I let him get away with this again-"

"Sir, we need you to calm down," the resident says. John tries to force his way past but to no avail, making an over-large scene. 

Needless to say they got escorted out by security. John finds it all sublimely convenient.

 

They stand outside on the doorstep, entrance’s door revolving as people enter and exit the hospital.

"I think he's dead." Rose says eventually.

"He's not dead."

"It could've been an accident," Rse says, "Just because he died doesn't mean he wasn't a sociopath."

"Does this look like an accident to you?” John jabs his thumb in the direction they came, “It's all been carefully tactfully staged. Its practically cinematic," John says bitterly. Since there’s no point in trying to get back in, he turns and starts down the pavement.

Rose follows in thoughtful silence, then says, "Maybe he was so egomaniacal he thought he couldn't get killed."

"There are limits to that kind of narcissism."

Rose rolls her eyes, and offers a ridiculous explanation instead, "Well, maybe he saved your life for selfish reasons."

“Of course its for selfish reasons. This is classic manipulative behavior, the hallmark of any self-respecting sociopath. He wants me to think he isn't one but I am not liable to make that mistake again.”

 

"Where is his body?! First it was organ donation and now its donation to science. You have to pick one!" John snaps at the ME. The following week, John had finished his shift as a locum early and headed straight for the medical examiner’s office where Sherlock’s body was supposedly being stored to confirm Sherlock’s vices.

“I’m sorry Dr. Watson, but that’s all I’m at liberty to disclose. If you’ll excuse me, I have several more autopsies to do today.”

John grabs his tie and pulls him back toward him. “Who are you covering up for? Is it Mycroft?”

“Dr. Watson get your hand off of me or I’ll have your disbarred for assaulting an employee.”

“John stop it!” John turns and sees Molly in the hallway, teary-eyed. There's a basket case for you. How anyone could still love a man after witnessing first hand his severely flawed personality is a mystery in itself.

“Molly, you haven’t seen Sherlock’s body lying around, have you? Dr. Gibson says it’s been misplaced,” John says playfully, although he’s clearly not in a humorous mood.

“This isn’t funny, John,” she’s quite visibly upset, John is impressed by the theatrics.

“Are those tears supposed to be for Sherlock?” he says. That hits a raw nerve and earns him some biting words and a drop kick out of the building.

John ultimately finds himself on the pavement again back at square one.

 

There's no service or anything in particular to commemorate his death. It seems the local mortician and parish have gotten tired of the formalities and would rather take the weekend off than cater to another one of Sherlock's fraudulent demises.

John goes and visits the newly resurrected grave, which is staged with freshly-laid Calla lillies. "How trite," he comments, toeing the petals.

"Come on then, show yourself," he hollers to anyone within hearing radius. He knows he's here. He wouldn't miss a deliciously blockbuster moment like this, not with all his narcissistic tendencies.

"So is this the part where you expect me to break down and cry?" he asks the crisp, minty air.  "What do you want me to do? Beg for you back like last time?"

"Or would you have me kneel down and tell you how I'm sorry, how I regret everything, how I would give anything to have you back? Something along those lines?"

The sole and final answer to his question is din of silence, interrupted only by a howl of wind. A few seconds slip by, then a minute. John's patience wears thin.

Lifting a faint, vanilla scent into the air, the wind rustles the flowers at Sherlock's grave, which John decides have outstayed their welcome and trashes thoroughly with his boot. Someone behind him starts laughing.

 

John turns around sharply, half expecting to find Sherlock there, admiring how his evil plan is working. Instead he finds his sister, Eurus, looking at him with an amused smile.

"Do you really want to see him?" she asks, in all earnestness.

John stands there, his mouth agape.

"Come along then," she says, walking toward the car park. While he thinks it might be the stupidest thing he's ever done, John's legs follow after her on their own accord.

 

Eurus procures a taxi all the way from the cemetary in Totenham to an ominous-looking, abandoned warehouse in Battersea. Its fortified iron walls are not a welcoming sight, and if she wanted to kill him he imagines this would be the ideal place to do it. Of course if she really wanted to kill him, he’d probably already be dead.

She guides him to a back door entrance, entering a key code into the security pad to disengage the lock.

“What is this place?” John asks, noticing the strange temperature drop as they enter. Craning his neck he can see multiple stories above, seperated by glass floors, and a high-rise ceiling. Access is restricted on all floors and the place is crawlng with security. It appears to be a covert, converted medical facility.

"Mycroft had me design it as a child. In exchange he gave me a violin,” she offers, as some kind of explanation.

As they proceed further into the interior of the bulding, which is cordoned off behind locked doors and security panels. They encounter an armed guard at a security checkpoint, who Eurus engages in conversation before promptly snapping his neck.

“What are you doing?!” John demands in outrage.

"What's it look like?" She asks, taking the deceased’s key card. John kneels down to check his pulse, but he's gone. Clean cervical dislocation. John isn't sure if he's in the right position to be reporting in a murder considering their suspicious mode of entry, or who he should even call, given that this appears to be some sort of black site.

When he looks up, Eurus has already taken off down the hall. Forced to keep up, he reluctantly leaves the fallen guardsman behind.

“No more killing people!” he hisses vehemently when he finally catches up to her.

“If you insist,” she sighs like he's being tiresome.

They're walking around a corner when suddenly bullets fire from the opposite end of the hallway.

John’s back hits the wall on instinct as several bullets ricochet down the tunnel. When he looks at Eurus, he sees she appears to have dodged the bullets by chanting her head to the side. There’s something about her that's decidedly not natural.

"Mycroft always gets touchy when I come here," she explains, like it's the usual sibling rivalry stuff.

“I'm going to go distract them,” she says, turning back.

"Wait-" John starts, instinctively knowing that going unarmed to distract people with semi-automatics is not a good idea.

She points to the passage on their right. "Sherlock is down that way. You'll find him at the end of the hall. The code is 12422476034." And she's gone before John can tell her not to. John huffs in annoyance. Just a half hour with her and he could go down for breaking and entering, accessory to murder, and pissing off the British government.

John turns toward the corridor she indicated and steels himself. The moment he sees his face he's going to kill him. It's decided.

As he walks down the hall the temperature nosedives to below freezing. He crosses his arms and tries to keep his teeth from chattering and freeze-drying off.

Glancing into the rooms as he passes by, he gets a weird area 51 feeling- there are racks and racks of corpses. What the hell is Sherlock doing in a giant mortuary like this?

He rolls his eyes. Why did he even ask?

 

When he arrives at the last door, he tries to open it but the handle burns his hands. He finds an entry panel next to the door, and scrapes off some encrusted ice on the display. He tries to remember the code she told him and enters it into the key pad. The door slides open automatically.

It's a warehouse sized room, however this one is mostly empty. Seems like a waste of energy to keep it refrigerated like this. At the back end he notices one solitary clinic bed accompanied by various medical apparatuses.

As he approaches, he grows concerned. His walk turns brisk, and then fast, and then he's running, subzero air filling his lungs. He stops dead in his tracks a few meters away.

It's Sherlock, lying horizontal, eyes closed. The monitor displays no heartrate, no brain activity, and a bunch of useless numbers he doesn't understand. He's not breathing.

 

What the hell? he keeps thinking on repeat. His thoughts start looping, trying to process what he's seeing. Was this what she met by Sherlock was here? That Sherlock was dead? She didn't care to mention that? Is this some kind of prank?

He touches his wrist and it burns ice-cold, his fingers coming away with frostbite.

 

_They are running for their lives, an armed assassin on their heels. Sherlock doesn’t make it very far, falling back against a tree. John stops and kneels down to see what’s wrong. When he comes closer he sees a shard of glass wedged in Sherlock’s side from an explosion they narrowly averted, or at least thought they did._

_“Don’t stop, John. You have to go.”_

_“You need medical attention-“_

_“There’s no time for that.”_

_John checks to see if he understood him correctly. “I’m not leaving you here-“ John says outright._

_“You don’t have a choice,” Sherlock tells him sternly._

_It happens rather fast. Sherlock catches sight of something behind him that cracks through his mask of composure and drains the color from his face. Then Sherlock is on top of him, and the sound of the gun has gone off. He's been shot. He’s moved John out of the way, flipping over on top of him._

_“John, you have to get out of here.”_

_“Why?”  John asks, looking up at him. Of course, John knows he'll likely die if he doesn't. More to the point, he asks that because he wonders what stake Sherlock has in whether he lives or dies. Sherlock’s eyes look desperate to him, almost afraid of what’s going to happen. Another shot fires, hitting him again, causing him to fall forward before catching himself._

_“I understand you may think this is strange, for a sociopath to want to save your life at the expense of his own,” he looks to be in an excruciating amount of pain, his eyes pools of agony and what looks deceptively like remorse. He’s having difficulty breathing and blood is pooling on the ground. “Be what I may, you are the only thing I care about, so if you would, do me the courtesy of letting me?”_

_“This is another ruse of yours isn't it?” John says, not amused. Sherlock laughs dryly._

_“You really need to work on those trust issues, John,” he says, growing pale from the blood loss._

_“There's a reason I'm like this and it starts with an S.”_

_“Is this really the place to be having this conversation?” Sherlock winces._

_The second Sherlock hears Lestrade’s voice behind them, yelling at the gunman to cease and desist, Sherlock loses all his strength, adrenaline subsiding after the threat has passed, and falls on top of John in a crimson, bloody mess._

John realizes that the moment he got shot the second time, that was the last time he saw him and the last time he would ever see him. He would never see the color of his eyes trained on him again. He would never see what was in those eyes, all the emotions that he thought were false, but had actually been real.

When the gun fired and his eyes were screaming out in fear, he had really been afraid.

That realization is the most crushing part- how he had discarded everything Sherlock had said and done in favor of the idea he didn't mean any of it. Everything he thought he knew about Sherlock had been wrong. He wasn't a sociopath as he had so fixedly, blindly believed. Sherlock had died protecting him and John hadn't even realized it, only to discover it all now, months after the fact.

The ground starts spinning under his feet, and his legs buckle. He puts his hands over his eyes, tries to subdue the ringing in his head.

He’d mistaken him for some kind of monster. John hadn't even known he was and had been the man he lionized, written about, and loved. Because John treated him like he was disposable and left him in the line of fire he died, naturally, like any other murder victim or mortally wounded soldier John had encountered. He'd managed a few death-defying schemes but Sherlock wasn't bullet proof. The reality of Sherlock's mortality sinks in, like the chill of a cold shower

He recounts in horror the memory of himself stomping on the lilies on his grave. The instant in the ER, when they told him he was dead and he had nonchalantly brushed it off, accusing Sherlock of pulling another of his stunts. That moment when the light left his eyes and he fell on top of John with bullets in his chest.

After a while, he brings himself to look at Sherlock. He wearing an unremarkable, generic uniform that is very unlike him- a pain white jumper with a barcoded sleeve and vest pocket and a pair of white sweatpants. He's pale as death, but looks otherwise unchanged, sharp features, dark raven hair, and all the things Molly described as wicked-beautiful.

John looks at him and can only wonder _what did I do?_

He hears the patter of feet behind him and turns his head. It's Mycroft, running across the room, a sheen of sweat on his head. He dabs it off with a handkerchief. "Oh John- its you," he says with relief. He seems unusually frantic, "Is she here?"

"Eurus?" John asks, "yes, she... she brought me here." John says, looking back at Sherlock. "She took off at the entrance. Haven't seen her since."

"I was worried she would try to dispose of the body," he says as an aside, then goes on to explain, "When Sherlock died, we took him here. This is a cryogenics laboratory owned by the government for national security purposes."

John continues looking at Sherlock with a pained expression. He can’t take his eyes off of him- his heartbreaking, familiar face, that with just one smile could toy with his emotions now frozen in death and expressionless, those eyes that used to follow him around the room, now forever closed, incarcerated in eternal sleep.

"I'm sorry for keeping this from you, and that you had to find out in this way. It was a necessary security precaution," he explains, seeing the look on John's face. "The building is currently on lock down, so it's best that we take our leave," he says.

"Right," John states, eyes fixed on Sherlock's lifeless form. He’s still in shock. It doesn’t feel quite real.

"John if you want, you can visit again,” he says, taking John by the shoulder as he guides him back out, “We'll give you the appropriate clearance and security briefing."

"Alright," John says numbly, as they make their way back to the entry room. He doesn’t mean to sound ungrateful, just that its more of a consolation prize than anything else. John takes one last look at Sherlock as they leave. Mycroft parts ways with him at the front gate to be escorted out by security personnel.

"And stay away from Eurus, please, if you know what's good for you,” Mycroft pleads with him on his way out, “She is extremely dangerous."

 

 


	2. Anger

At the tail end of his shift, he and practically the whole rest of the ward gets an earful from a woman screaming at her financially incompetent husband about how she's not going to take care of him if he gets another heart attack. The senile inpatient in the bunk next to them tells her that in the grand scheme of things she ought to be kinder to her husband, even if he is a useless, and inane and all the things aforementioned. John finds himself staring dumbfounded at the elderly man who voiced this opinion for no apparent reason, then introspectively pondering over it the whole drive home.

"No bitching about Sherlock today?" Rose asks as John is making dinner.  
"No."  
"Nothing?" Rose asks, quite astonished. It's a first.  
"You have to watch your tongue, darling," John says, chopping up vegetables and tossing them into a pressure cooker, "You're only five years old. You're not even supposed to have a full vocabulary yet."  
"That's funny coming from you. You're the one who swears like a sailor."  
"I do not."  
"It's always _that damned blasted bastard son-of-a-bitch Sherlock_ this _\- that lying, twisted, scheming, con-artist devil's-incarnate psychopath-from-hell Sherlock_ that-" John does a sharp intake, not entirely prepared for shock brought on by his own words. " _He deserves to rot in hell, for all I care,_ you said _. I ought to send him there myself_ , you said. Your words, not mine," she says in her defense, absolving herself of any culpability in the matter.

Yes, he did say that. He'd said a lot of things. So many things and they were are all so dreadfully wrong. Hearing them again is as sobering as a punch in to the face.  
He's accidentally dropped the knife, which hits the kitchen tile with a clang.  
"Did you get cut?" Rose is asking, although he dosn't entirely hear her.  
It escapes him how he could have said things like that. The words feel like a slight. They are so horribly misguided, so vexing, they're still ringing in his ears, ears he can hardly believe.  
"Hello. Earth to Dad."  
But he did say them, didn't he?  
Rose is about to pick up the knife, but John sees her and snaps out of it.  
"No- no, I've got it," he says kneeling down to retrieve the mincing knife.  
"You're bleeding," she says.  
"Go get the first aid kit. Run along," John says, pressing his hand against the cut on his palm to curb the bleeding, frowning as it smarts. "And no more cursing!" he tells her as she runs out the kitchen. He can't have this like-sailor-like-daughter nonsense.  
He leans his forehead against the cupboard beneath the sink and heaves a sigh.

 

 

A couple days later at Bart's, John is walking back from the ER to the west wing when he sees Molly. He meets her eyes in the hallway then looks away, unable to return her gaze. He can't even speak as they pass by each other.  
"And how is the quest for Sherlock's lost remains treating you?" she asks him, having braced herself for today's dose of uncalled-for accusations and the emotional wreckage John tends leave in his wake. But it's John this time, that feels the blunt force of it.  
John literally just stands there, unable to think of anything to say. The steely, cold look in her eyes paralyzes him. It occurs to him how wrong it was to blame her for everything he did, when Sherlock's death was enough to handle as it is.  
"Whatever you have to say today I don't want to hear it-" she says, brushing past him. It's as he sees her go that the guilt flares up in his chest and he feels compelled to apologize. "Molly, wait-" he says, grabbing her arm.  
She leaves him there, standing in the annex to the west wing, with busy bodies passing by, minding their business. John lifts a hand, bringing it to his cheek, processing what happened.  
He hadn't been able to finish because Molly had turned around and slapped him across the face. Not the petty kind of slap you use to bring someone to their senses or make them apologize. It'd been laced with actual vitriol, a direct affront that she'd done without even thinking, swift as a reflex. She slapped him because she literally couldn't stand the sight of him.

"Dr. Watson, here is the chart for Harrison Wilcox, room 4," one of the attending RN's says once he returns, handing him a file, "Also, one of your patients, Lauren Urban called requesting a refill for the lanzoprazol medication you prescribed..."

Perhaps he should have anticipated, or even expected that sort of reaction from her. But it still left him standing there in the hall for quite some time, stunned. Yet somehow the sensation of that hit against his face was kinder than the wounds he was carrying internally, a brief respite from the howls of his own grief, the abject emptiness that followed, and the brutal way the world just continued on. 

 

He gets the clearance as Mycroft promised. They want his fingerprints and retinal scans and other strange biometrics he doesn't question. After a few days he manages to work up the courage to set foot into that locked-down fortress where people rarely walk in and even less frequently walk out.

He heads through security, that is, the legal way. The number of security personnel has ramped up significantly from last time, although they don't give him much trouble, which is likely a byproduct of Mycroft's influence and the fact they already have him in their system. He can't imagine they get many visitors.

He finds his way back to the vast and largely empty warehouse unit at the end of the hall, hazy incandescent lights and whirling fans playing tricks on the liquid nitrogen vapors circling around on the floor. His chest knots up as he approaches the cot at the far end of the room and he has to turn away to give himself a moment.

The second time seeing him like this isn't any easier. He'd been dreading it the whole week, putting it off, avoiding it, distracting himself with work. But the pain and horror and shame spring up fresh the moment he lays eyes on him, like it's happening all over again.  
It's been a week. Absolutely nothing has changed. Sherlock is just as dead as he was seven days ago. Just as sombre. Just as still. Looking just as he did in life, in a nostalgic, brutal, and cruel kind of way, his image a perpetual reminder of everything he did so royally wrong.  
He wonders what he was thinking coming here, why he's doing this to himself. Then he realizes he can't bring himself to leave, either. He literally can't pull his eyes away from his pale, phantom-like form, laid out the a stretcher like he's in a casket.

"Mycroft brought him here to keep him safe," a voice echoes behind him, suddenly interrupting the pin-drop silence. It scares the living daylights out of him. He blots around to see Eurus stroll in casually, his heart hammering in his chest. He has to marvel at how she even made it in here, seeing that she left dead bodies in her wake when she visited last. Since then the whole site has been on high alert-- but apparently not high enough.

"He's never going to open his eyes again though," she says, looking down at her brother. John follows her eyes back to Sherlock, settling on his painstakingly familiar face, his gaunt features and wavy, black hair.

"How did this happen?" he says after a long silence, the warmth of his breath casting fog into the air, "I don't understand. Any of this. I thought that- I thought for sure he-"

"I thought it should be obvious by now that he loved you more than he loved life," she says in bored monotone.

John feels himself shaking uncontrollably, nails digging into the palms of his hands. "That's not possible."

"I asked," he insists, his voice low and grating, "I asked him. And he- his response was to-" He can still hear the crack of the gun that answered him when he'd pleaded with him, when in his panic the last insane words he could think of were ' _If you love me, don't do this-'_

"You don't want to hear it, you choose to ignore it, but the only reason he's ever shot a gun was because there was another pointed at you."

"No." He rejects the idea outright. He can't accept it. He can't even think it.

"And when he was left with no alternative he got between you and that gun-"

Something in him twists past breaking and snaps, and then he's turned to her, blurting things out blindly without even thinking. "That is _not_ what happened," he insists with sudden vehemence, "We both know  that is a bold-faced lie. I'm not interested in hearing your absurd ungrounded insinuations- You've got no right talking complete nonsense about things you would have no way of knowing-"  
He stops when he realizes she's chuckling to herself- _laughing_ \- apparently amused by his little outburst. John swallows, her laugh snuffing out his anger, and replacing it with equal parts horror and confusion.

"It's not a mystery what happened, John," she says with a blithe, wry voice, like it's practically inconsequential, "There's little point in denying it. Not anymore anyway," she says, eyes hovering over her brother's unmoving form. That simple fact hollows him out, and in that instant, he feels utterly powerless. It doesn't matter what happened. No amount of squabbling, petty arguments, or finger-pointing will bring him back.

"Well I could try to fix him I suppose. But he wouldn't be the same. So I don't see the point," she muses, stroking his hair, taken a seat at the head of his bed. He wishes she wouldn't do that. It's horribly distracting. It feels like she's grinding the shattered remains of what used to be his heart into smaller, splinter-sized pieces with a rusty metal cheese grater.

"What do you mean- fix him?" John asks.

"Make his brain rewire around the parts that aren't working anymore," she explains, although it doesn't exactly clarify any of his confusion.

"Are you saying you can actually do that?"

"Possibly. I know how his brain worked, for the most part," she muses. His first instinct is to disbelieve her. It strains credulity to think she would even be capable of doing that, regardless of whatever extraordinary capabilities her intellect affords her. "He's very simple. Predictable, even," she says, sounding very bored, "In fact, I knew that this would happen to him." John looks at her with a question in his eyes, skepticism on his face. How could she know something like that? "He nearly killed himself once when he was fifteen. He jumped in front of a car to save his dog." John stares, dumbfounded, his mouth parted open until he remembers to close it.

How strange. Even to him, it seems borderline irrational to go risking your life for a pet. He never would've thought Sherlock of all people could love something that much.  
John turns back to him, feeling sick to his stomach. There's something wincingly painful about imagining him when he was younger, knowing he wouldn't live to see past 30.

"Mycroft was so angry, he had the dog put down the same day," she recounts. John feels a twinge of sorrow hearing that, how he risked his life to save something only to have it taken away anyway. He can understand why he never mentioned the dog. "Of course, that didn't fix the problem. He gets too attached to things."

It takes him a moment to piece it together. What she meant by predictable, by too attached to things, by his driving in front of automobiles. She meant that John is the dog. That this time, the car didn't miss.

The realization hits him, makes him feel hot and cold at the same time. He can't move, frozen in that one spot, his breath catching in his throat. He stands like that for a while, numb not from the freezing cold but from shock.

Eventually she stands back up to take her leave. "In any case, I didn't mean to interrupt."  
Interrupt what? he thinks, haplessly. Interrupting would imply some level of interaction, which is largely limited at this point.  
Then it occurs to John that she's actually making fun of him. His jaw clenches tight and something sharp and bitter twists in his chest. "Don't let me stop you- enjoy staring longingly at Sherlock all by your lonesome for the rest of eternity," she smiles warmly, giving him a wave as she leaves.  
For god's sake, she did not have to put it like that, he thinks, glaring at her as she walks off. She might as well have added on the 'too soon?' most people tag on after telling a joke.

The cold nips at his nose and cheeks, stealing away the feeling in his hands and feet as he continues staring at Sherlock endlessly, in spite of her taunting him about that earlier. His thoughts go back to what she said- that she could fix him. Was she telling him what he wanted to hear? Was she conducting some sort of psychological experiment on him? Maybe she was just toying with him.

 

 

After a few days, John starts aching to see him again, even if he's still and motionless in death. Going to Ministry of Defense Cryogenics Laboratory is, as always, painful reminder of what happened, yet he finds he can't stop himself from going, as painful as it is. When he returns to that frost-laden room, he stays by Sherlock's side for a stretch of time, when eventually Mycroft joins him.

"Did you put down Sherlock's dog?" John asks Mycroft, breaking the silence.

"What?" he says, not having anticipated John's sudden and random question.

"Nevermind," John sighs. It was an equally stupid and pointless question. He shouldn't even be entertaining the possibility that what Eurus had said during his earlier visit was anything other than a manipulative design.

"It was a long time ago. We had to get rid of the dog. It was causing certain... uncalled-for complications." Mycroft says, nursing a nicotine craving with one low-tar cigarette. "Who told you he had a dog?" Mycroft enquires, keeping his other hand in his pocket, shielded from the cold.

"Eurus did."

"Have you been talking to her again? I warned you about her, didn't I?"

John swallows, knowing he shouldn't go there, shouldn't let himself buy into the obvious tricks she was playing on him. He knows full well he is going to regret what he's about to ask, indulging in the false and impossible. "She told me that she could fix him."

"She told you that?" Mycroft asks with a raised eyebrow, looking surprised that she would tell him something like that.

"She's delusional isn't she?"

"Well.." Mycroft sighs, exhaling a cloud of smoke, "Not entirely. That was originally the reason we brought him here. We thought we could convince Eurus to bring him back-- But she was very much against it and instead tried to incinerate the body."

"But how could she possibly bring him back? He's dead," John says, if only to state the obvious.

"Well, as you know he was on life support, so not on the whole, dead, just legally dead. Instead of pulling the plug or letting his condition deteriorate, we had him preserved."

"Legally dead is not usually a good prognosis."

"I appreciate your skepticism, but, she has... done this sort of thing before. She has certain nack for neural circuits, from what little I understand."

"You mean a nack better than the all the world leaders in biomedical research and the entire field of medicine?"

"Indeed. It's how she can control people, get them to jump off buildings, etcetera. That was how we lost her childhood psychologist, Thomas Hartley."

John falls silent, pondering over what Mycroft had relayed to him. It was one thing to discard what Eurus had said before when it was only something she had mentioned in passing, but if Mycroft was also convinced of this, and he knew Eurus better than John did, then it wasn't as easy to ignore. He leaves shortly afterward to get Rose ready for school, still turning it around in his head.

He feels extremely wary of it all. It's a dangerous thing to go chasing after hopes that can't be sustained.

After mulling it over for hours on end, well into the silent night, he's still unable to get it out of his head. He decides he needs to seek her out. Get answers, get it straightened out. Even if everything he learned in medical school is telling him it's a lost cause.

 

 

 

When he sets foot on Sherrinford after a miserable clipper ride to the island that drenches him head to foot, it's the usual beastly, tempestuous weather, with flailing birches and flooding shores. When he arrives at the main entrance, locked doors bar him from entering and no one comes to open them. Eventually he discovers his government clearance also affords him limited access to the asylum and keys himself in.

Upon entering the lobby, he discovers the facility is completely deserted and the power is out. "Brilliant," he says aloud, just what he'd been looking forward to- venturing unarmed into the unsurveilled depths of a creepy, abandoned mental hospital. He hears Mycroft in the back of his head, having warned him against this several times.

He wanders through the unmanned security desk and makes his way through the groaning hallway in the blinding dark, trying not to listen to the way the wind makes the walls creek. He stops dead in his tracks, a soft, high-pitched noise sends shiver up his spine. Turning his head, he catches wind of the shrill sound of violin playing far way, just barely audible over the crashing waves outside.

John follows the sound of the violin through the long glass halls with only the occasional skylight or window to guide him in the low light, spilling sliver reflections onto the bulletproof glass of the hallways. The music leads him to the elevator, which isn't working either. He finds the stairwell to the subterranean level, dissonant, minor notes resonating from two stories below. He muses how the eerie, ominous quality of it would make a good introduction to a horror film. He can practically hear the audience bidding him not to go down there.

He scales down the steps toward the light beaconing from the bottom floor, his footsteps echoing against the steel stairs. He finds Eurus in her cell, trher Stradivarius until she suddenly stops mid-score.

"What is it now?" she asks, her voice echoing throughout the cell, somewhat irked by the disruption.

"It's about Sherlock."

"Of course it is," she sighs, returning the violin to her case. "So now that you've finally realized he's not a sociopath you've come groveling to me for his life."

John doesn't deny it. That is a pretty good summary of what he's doing.

"It's a little late in the game don't you think? To realize you are in love with him now that he's dead," she says, rosining the bow, shedding the dust flecks of amber into the air.

He remembers when he used to argue when people said things like that to him. Now it just seems stupid.

"You can fix him can't you?" he asks, hating the dreadful way the audacious question hangs in the air, vainly hopeful and implausible.

"You should let him go, John," she tells him matter-of-factly, then resumes her machinations to the tune of Vivaldi. The abandon with which she says that and returns to her violin burns, scorching cold.

It yanks and tears at his heart strings, hearing that plain and simple fact laid bare. The one thing he knows all to well but can't bring himself to accept.

He hears those haunting words over and over in his head that evening. You should let him go, John. The way she'd said it with such plain, factual conviction gave John the feeling he ought to listen to her. But he can't. He tries to sleep and gives up at some point past 4 in the morning.

He grabs his blazer, which is still wet from their previous encounter, and marches back out into the mounting winter storm.


End file.
